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Pod Your Reef

2.5g Mini-Bow - LED Illuminated


reefpirate

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Here is a comparison shot of the Luxeon III 3wt (left) to Luxeon 1wt (right) both are of the Royal Blue type. The Luxeon III's have a slightly thicker alum. PCB.

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Ok one last hardware shot then it is back to the reflector and tank! This is how the Luxeons ship eight to a mfg. tree... this should give you DIY'ers some ideas... it is much easier to mount the whole tree to a reflector or heatsink then to break appart individual stars and mount each one. The spacing is almost 1" apart which should be plenty of distance from LED-LED if you mount to an aluminium reflector about twice the size of the "tree of stars" you should have plenty of cooling area for the 8 1 wt stars.

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Now with the tank sitting in a room with 300wt of overhead incandescent lighting. This photo does a nice job of appoximating color I think ... I'm a bit blinded right now! The 3wt blues make for a nice brilliant blue coloration - however I think there is sufficient blue in the white LED's ... this may be a bit overkill.

 

-Bill

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After leaving the lights on for a considerable amount of time the warmest temp I could measure was 105deg at the LED Junction.... Seems like the heatsink is doing the job. This should be one cool running aquarium.

 

-Bill

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It will be nice when those LEDs come down in price in a bit. I bet after they start using those in home lighting you will be able to get them for pennies. It will also be interesting to see how corals like the light.

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Once the 10wt LED's come out I may be able to afford the 5wt ones :) Figuring 45 bucks / LED it would cost $1350 to throw 30 into an array... of course you wouldn't have to deal with a chiller or massive evap from a cooling fan... this was the biggest down side to my 50 reef... the 250 Iwasaki threw a bunch of light and a bunch of IR... the glass tank doesn't let IR pass so it got seriously warm in the summer months...

 

I think a 5 or 7 or 10 gallon tank may be the upper practical limits of this kind of lighting until the cost comes down.

 

Ok so it's time to get some life in there - so I need to get cracking on that.

 

Originally posted by birdman204

That is just effin cool........  I want, I want , I want!!!  lesse , you could cram what , 30 or so 5 wt'ers over a 10 G.  MMMmmmmmm...

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The spectral output graphs look very promising. The whites seem to output the type of light that would benifit the coral. One worry is that the light would be too pure... as in the case of using all blues..

 

At this point I think the intensity and distribution appears very good for some of your low light type corals. I doubt it is enough to support SPS corals. I am gonna try and dig up a lux meter and get some comparisons.

 

Originally posted by cliffrouse11baseball

Will corals grow well under these types of lights?

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And if it doesn't... then I'm gonna need to find some shades for the goldfish that my kids want to put in there LOL!

 

-Bill

 

Originally posted by cliffrouse11baseball

Will corals grow well under these types of lights?

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  • 2 weeks later...

GREAT thread! I would love to try something like this in a 2.5 gallon bow. I can't wait to see how well corals do under these lights. Please keep us posted!

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An added note, there is a new Xitanium LED driver that is dimmable via standard external dimmers / timers. I guess in theory, one can set the LEDs to gradually intensify and dim over the course of the day.

 

Maybe use another dimmable Xitanium to drive some blue LEDs to simulate moon phases throughout the month? :-)

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Worked out the bugs in the lift tube arrangement so I should be just about ready to add some live rock and sand.... only took a half-dozen trips to a half-dozen hardware stores to piece the mess together. it looks like it just may work... The idea is to use airlift tubes external to the tank and not allow the bubble back into the aquarium where they will splash all over causing salt creep.... I used two 1.5" diameter lift tubes and made up a set of make-shift bulk heads as the commercial bulk-heads just were not working out. Photos to come.

 

-Bill

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  • 3 weeks later...

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